The Beat Patrol

This early, somewhat bizarrely-written Dave Marsh piece comes from the Dec. 1970 issue of ZigZag magazine…

 

There’s a sad possibility that people are on the verge of discovering, exploiting and generally going on about the Detroit Sound (like they did with San Francisco successfully, and Boston abysmally).

Detroit dwellers are proud of their bands and loyal to them, and the last thing they want is for some outsider with ulterior motives to pull a big sack over them and rush forth proclaiming nonsenses about indigenous styles and stuff like that. Here Dave Marsh of Detroit’s Creem magazine talks about The Stooges, whose outrageous audience repelling or magnetising behaviour and ‘magnificent pimply rubbish rock’ have made them into some kind of a local legend in Michigan. The band’s line-up has slightly altered since the article was written and is now: Iggy Pop (nee Stooge)/vocals. Zeke Zettner/bass. Ron Asheton/guitar. Scott Asheton/drums. Billy Cheatham/guitar. Steve Mackay/saxaphones…

 

I. PAUL BUTTERFIELD HIMSELF

This is a story about the Stooges. I’ve taken some time to check it out and it seems that there’s really only one way to start it:

 

O*N*C*E*U*P*O*N*A*T*I*M*E*

in the big bad city of Detroit, occasionally oozing over into Ann Arbor and other places familiar only to the transplanted hillbillies, college kids and transient factory workers who live there, there was a Blues Band called the Prime Movers.

Now the Prime Movers were not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill Rock and Roll Band; no, no, they were far above and beyond that, they would only play the real, true, Blackaspossible Chicago Blues. And they were pretty good at it, too. They had all the Muddy Waters albums and all the Paul Butterfield records and all the Howlin’ Wolf and Siegel-Schwall records and between this and that and a whole lot of beer, the band got on quite fine, thank you.

At the time that our story begins, the Movers (as they were known to the in-group blues crew who were their fans, groupies and general admirers) needed a drummer.

At roughly the same time, in Ann Arbor, which is where most of this story takes place, lived young Jim Osterberg, a nineteen year-old drummer who lived with his convenient, economical parents in a convenient, economical house trailer.

Now, Jim had played in a high school rock and roll band called the Iguanas, which did not play the True Black Blues but instead played scurrilous, degradee rock and roll. But, since the Movers needed a drummer and Jim (as he was known then and sometimes still is) happened to be the best one available. Since Jim was also captivated by the sound of the Real Black Blues, it was both necessary (for our story and history) and logical that he should join the band.

**H*E**D*I*D**

So Iggy joined the Prime Movers and they played the True Black Blues together and sat around at night and discussed such topics (seriously, even though they were dead drunk) as “Can Livonia Produce A True Practitioner of the True Black Blues” (and Billy C., who later ended up with Commander Cody, would always say yes, yes they can.) and “How the Fuck Does Paul Butterfield Sound So Good When He’s White?.” (All across the land in 1965 and ‘66, thousands upon thousands of young men discussed these same questions; then they heard In My Own Dream and they knew).

You can imagine their surprise and super-feelings of anticipation and excitement when one day, Boot Hill or someone called them up on the phone and said that the legendary

P*A*U*L*B*U*T*T*E*R*F*I*E*L*D**H*I*M*S*E*L*F**

was coming to Detroit along with his storied first band which included such luminaries as:
Michael Bloomfield! and Sammy Lay!
(who was not only a True Practioner of the True Black Blues, he also had Roots and was a Spade) to play at a club called “The Living End” on the Lodge in Detroit.

Little did they then suspect that this was to be the beginning of the end for the now-legendary Prime Movers (anymore than they suspected that they were legendary, or ever would be) for Sam Lay was to make “Iggy” (as Jim was known then and still is, to this very day) his protege. (Iggy was called Iggy because of his previous association with that ghastly, skonko rock and (ugh!) roll band, the Iguanas. Or “that band”, as the fellow Movers probably referred to it.)

At any rate the culmination of all this was that Iggy moved to Chicago where he lived in famous Bob Koester’s basement (Famous Bob is Famous because he owns a record label called Delmark, which records only True Black Blues and also, sometimes, some jazz.)

In Chicago, Iggy was to play with such famous masters of the blues as, of course, Sammy Lay, whose protege he was, and J.B. Hutto, who had Roots and were Spades. And he also Found Something Out.

He found out that the True Black Blues were only True for people who had Roots and were Spades. “When those Black dudes play the blues, man, it’s psychedelic,” Iggy told me once. I wouldn’t say that that should go unchallenged, either for veracity or descriptiveness, but it’s a good quote. Iggy Stooge is always good copy – when he wants to be.

“Well,” Iggy continued, “when I found that out, I knew I had to come home and make my own music.” And he knew what kind of music it was, and by now you probably do too (or, if not, you can guess) but, just in case you don’t it was

**R*O*C*K**A*N*D**R*O*L*L**

Now, in order to play True Rock and Roll (and, believe me, as it later turned out no one has ever played Truer Rock and Roll) you have to have a band. Which entails hooking up with other people. Iggy had one True Friend back home in Ann Arbor, whose name was Ron Asheton (he is still Iggy’s True Friend, which you can see if you will look at the back of the Stooges’ album cover). But let’s have Iggy tell us about how he and Ron Got It Together.

“I knew Ron see from when I joined the Movers. Ron was just learning to play bass then. We just met and became Real Good Friends. We were just these kids who were so flipped out that we had, really, just gone ahead and quit school and stuff cause we wanted to play. There was nobody doin’ that then except for
(SNEER)
musicians, you know? We were just loose in the town, going up to this practice room every day. Goin’ Up and Playin’. I played drums and he played bass.

“I got him a job with the Movers and he was really learnin’ to play Good. He played for like two weeks. They let him do it for a couple of weeks but he was always too Rock and Rolly, too much like me, and they wanted to keep the band like Them. So, as soon as they had a better chance to get somebody that was really Experienced, they

**G*A*V*E**R*O*N**T*H*E**B*O*O*T**

Iggy rectified the situation as best he could by getting Ron a job with the Chosen Few, who play mostly Rolling Stones, Pretty Things, Yardbirds and Who rip-offs. They needed a bass-player for the summer and Scott Richardson, their lead singer, being Iggy’s old friend, they ended up with Ron. “And then Ron started getting Real Good,” as Iggy puts it.

“I went to Chicago, and as soon as I came back I went to Ron and Scott’s house. They were my only Real Friends in Ann Arbor, that I Cared For, and that night when I got back, the Chosen Few broke up.

“So then originally, we thought we would have Scott for a singer and me for a drummer and just make a regular band. Then Ron and I decided we wanted (long pause)………A Real Band. With Real Soul. Literally, Fame and Fortune. While we went on to Oblivion. Every month that went by, he was doin’ better and we was doin’ worse. Because we were so NAÏVE that we thought we could do something that was practically impossible.”

Sure enough, the Scott Richardson SRC Case did indeed become locally famous. And somehow, the Stooges, naivete or no, made it to wherever you or I or all the rest of them, think they are now. Which is probably several different places at once.

But we’ve left Iggy a drummer; once we get him a True Band, once we make him the Apocalyptic Vocalist that he is, we can go on to the things implied in that last paragraph.

“Ron said to me one night, ‘You really need the freedom, don’t you Jim?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I do.’ He said, ‘Yeah I think you should sing’.” To hear Iggy tell it, the whole band got together like that. Scott got in to be the drummer because he was Ron’s brother and Iggy’s True Friend. Dave used to live around the corner from the Ashetons, moved into the Stooge Manor when they got it and they just sort of said, OK, YOU CAN BE IN THE BAND TOO.

And so they fucked around for a year, jamming/practicing occasionally, managed by a dude to whom Iggy refers today as “The Mad Professor”, living in a house with their crazy, literally insane (from the sound of it) manager. More Iggy apocrypha? “I used to just scream stuff like ‘Fuck you, the Mad Professor’ when we’d practice, those were my lyrics,” he’s telling you and you can’t make up your mind, because he’s charismatic enough to make you want to believe him. But this is while there were only three of them, with Iggy on organ and Scott just learning to drum and Ron still on bass. Then, a little bit later, when they were really broke and that was all they could afford to rent, Iggy played Hawaiian guitar for awhile.

Finally, Halloween of ‘67, after the trio had lived together for the entire year, they got a job, at a private Halloween party. Their private party Halloween premiere.

“It was just an instrumental group,” Iggy remembers. “I just sat on the floor and played Lead Hawaiian Guitar. If you can picture that.”

“And then my Hawaiian guitar broke, so that was that.” In the meantime they’d dumped the Mad Professor for a guy they’d met at the premiere party, Jimmy Silver. Jimmy is an exquisite macrobiotic businessman and All Around Good Guy, from Ann Arbor by way of Ohio and New York (which he sounds like), long-haired, astrological. Of whom many people have said:
HE’S THE ONLY PERSON I KNOW WHO COULD MANAGE THE STOOGES.
And no doubt they’re right.

He’s rumored to have driven the boys to macrobiotics, though at this point it’s hard to say who is macro and who isn’t (in the band, not to mention elsewhere). Iggy says, though, that while he doesn’t consume flesh, he’s not macrobiotic at the moment; he says he’d prefer to give things his own labels.

At any rate, the boys got signed by Elektra, which is one of the stories, kept plugging away and got their album out and generally have prospered enough to make the ending of this part “and they lived happily ever after” if I wanted. But it is only the ending of this part; the second part can be some stories and stuff, things that fit in but without any real transition between them. Stuff you need to see to understand the last half.

 

II. – SOME STRANGE STORIES AND TALES ABOUT IGGY AND THE GUYS

A. The most famous Iggy Epic is that he’s been in jail about half his career. Which Iggy may or may not have denied in the past depending on whether or not he felt like it was beneficial.

Anyway, he told me he’d only been busted once, to the point of going to jail, in Romeo, Michigan. “Indecent exposure,” he explained. “I took off my pants and went back on stage and started to do a striptease. I just sorta got Crazed, I got out of hand. It was a little two bit thing not a big show. I often get inspired by the Oddest Things at the Littlest Shows, sometimes.”

B. Snappy, dapper Dan Carlisle, big-time motown d.j. tells the story of walking into a very early Stooges gigtastrophe and being amazed, dumbfounded and thoroughly repulsed. Summoning all his courage, Carlisle approached John Sinclair and asked him rather belligerently, “Who the fuck is that obnoxious band up there?” To which John replied, “Man, that’s the Stooges, the world’s only psychedelic band.”

Carlisle even told that one over the air one night, in roughly those words, which may or may not verify it.

C. When the Stooges went to Elektra to record, Iggy said, “WE HAD NEVER WRITTEN OR PERFORMED OR SUNG A COMPLETE SONG BY OURSELVES OR ANYBODY ELSE”

So, in order to have something to work with in the studio, they worked up a few tunes, causing Iggy to learn to play guitar a bit. And took the result over to Jac Holzman at Elektra who said “No.” And wasn’t going to release it.

So the boys told him, “Aw hell, Jac, that’s only the beginning. We’ve got lotsa other stuff. Give us another chance, man.” And he agreed, figuring that they actually had the other songs ready. And two days later they did.

Ron and Iggy wrote ‘em all in two days and the band recorded them in two days. And that became the first Stooges album. Heh, heh.

D. IGGY TELLS ONE – ‘I’m Sick’ b/w ‘Asthma Attack’

“We used to have this jam called ‘I’m Sick’ and we did a song at the same time called ‘Asthma Attack’. What that was, right about the time we recorded I got this big disease and practically died. Lost about twenty pounds. I was just up here in this room for about three weeks, just on my back. I literally couldn’t move. Couldn’t do nothin’. But I didn’t want to go to a doctor because I don’t like to do those things at all, because they’re very…they sap one’s strength.

“So we had to do a show, right in the middle of the biggest part of my sickness…(here he paused and played his guitar for awhile)… I was completely…(a similar pause, slightly shorter)…just in total…(third pause, shorter yet)…I can’t describe what kind of sickness it was, except that it was everything at once.

“The funniest thing was that when I was really sick, I had to literally by the will come up on stage arid when I got on stage, I was white as a sheet. It was this way, we did about three jobs. While I was sick, ’cause we could never afford to turn down Even One Job. ‘Cause our backs were always against the wall. This is right when we got signed by Elektra, September and October of ‘68.

“The night Jac Holzman was here from Elektra, we did ‘I’m Sick’, ‘Asthma Attack’ and one other song about being sick. And nobody believed us; everybody thought it was this way of saying ‘I’m Sick of All This’. I was singing songs about what I was really into – during ‘Asthma Attack’ I would wheeze you know, for real. On those jobs I couldn’t even dance on stage. I just barely had to get up and sing and I would fall down there and lay by the mike in pain, you know, I was in Real Pain. People were booing because they thought it was a put on and they’re going, “What’s This?” You know? That was

O*N*E*O*F*T*H*E*O*D*D*E*S*T**L*I*T*T*L*E**T*H*I*N*G*S**

“We did those songs for about three jobs. ‘Asthma Attack’ was a good song too.”

And what did Holzman think? “Well, he didn’t talk to me directly about it. I think he just said it put him REAL UPTIGHT”.

E. THE BEST TIME I EVER SAW THE STOOGES

An infamous job, in front of something like 1500 people at a junior college (Henry Ford) in Dearborn (Ford’s hometown), which is the roughly Midwestern equivalent of Orange County.

The set featured two of the best known Stooge tunes of that era (when you had to be a true Stooge afficionado to know that they had titles for the things they did; best titles in the world, actually), called ‘Goodbye Bozos’ and ‘The Dance of Romance’. (‘Dance of Romance’ was to become “the bizarre but lovely” (ugh!) ‘Anne’ on the album.)

It was during this particular performance of ‘Bozos’ that I first became aware of how good the Stooges were at doing what they did. (Which was not at all what they do now.) As a pot-bellied jr. college specimen walked out of the auditorium with his acned mistress, Iggy called out the soul-frying insult, “GOOD BYE…(long pause)…YOU FAT MOTHUH” sending half the audience to its feet in repulsion, half in response to what they knew had happened – a strong occurence of truth-telling from that platform for liars and sophists.

Later, Iggy was to hop atop a girl and become slightly too violent, lacerating her or something. Which wouldn’t've been so bad if it hadn’t been that she was The DEAN’S DAUGHTER!!! And, from what I’ve been told, the Stooges and Iggy haven’t heard the last of that one yet.

F. A couple of issues ago, Gay Power ran an interview between Rita Redd and Jackie Curtis about Iggy, whose lithe bod was featured in a Jaggeresque (Stoogesque?) pose upon the cover. Iggy says it was the best thing he ever saw on himself and I’m hardly in a position to disagree, so here’s a good little bit of it:

 

JACKIE: What did you want to say about Iggy Stooge?

RITA: He wasn’t there for the audience’s benefit; the audience was there for his benefit and he told them so…when the audience didn’t come to Iggy, Iggy went to the audience, knocking plates down, glasses, standing on tables, and telling people to get up and if they didn’t get up he pulled them up out of their seats, spilling drinks as well as girls’ pocketbooks across the floor.

J: What else?

R: And then, when he’d taken complete command of the audience, he turned his back on them. He then proceeded to add insult to injury by proceeding to stand there for fifteen minutes while the people in the club just stared, their eyes were glued to Iggy. They were enthralled by his torso, his silver lame gloves and his ripped jeans…

J: Well, what about other people in the audience, how do you think the male counterpart reacted?

R: Iggy was insulting their masculinity by throwing it in their faces, reminding them of the role they play. Of course, the world is full of masochists. I think Iggy’s a great star.

J: Do you think Iggy’s a masochist?

R:…He slaps himself in the face but I think he does that for audience reaction, you know, I think he really isn’t slapping himself but really slapping them and don’t forget he’s wearing those silver lame gloves and that’s quite a different slap…He hypnotized me, my dear, not only me but the entire audience…The whole mood of the audience was either antagonized by him or, like a lot of them, I noticed they were rooting for him, egging him on. So there was a noticeable controversy which instantly creates an interest in what happened at the moment…I felt that people in the audience that were singled out for abuse were the ones who really dug it the most.

J: What kind of personal vibration did you get from him, if any?

R: More than the vibes it was PURE ENERGY, RAW, (emphasis added) the audience was turning on from his sheer force and that was a definite up.

J: Do you think any of his advances were sexual?

R: THEY WERE PAST THE SEXUAL POINT, THEY WERE INSULTING!…He had no way of knowing what this girl would do. He was taking a chance too. He was making an idiot out of himself too.

J: Iggy seems to have confused you.

R: I think Iggy is confused himself…It wasn’t two males up there on stage, it was just SEX. A love-making movement, simple pure and beautiful, without gender or hostility.

There’s as good or better descriptions elsewhere in that interview but one sequence in particular is especially enlightening:

J: Why did you say that Iggy has the magic touch?

R: He’s putting an old number in new light.

J: What do you mean?

R: He’s taking what Elvis Presley did, giving you a taste of Mick Jagger…

J: None of Jim Morrison?

R: No, Jim Morrison is really gross.

 

The only thing Jim Morrison is into is displaying his cock so he can prove he still has one. WHEN IGGY IS ON STAGE THERE’S NEVER ANY DOUBT.

 

III. A DAY IN ANN ARBOR WITH IGGY STOOGE

Iggy met me at the door, black-shirted and booted, explained that he’d been combing his hair for the last hour and laughed. We ended up sitting on the living room couches, he on one, I at right angles on another. Jim took the place of Iggy, his stage presence, or rather personality, only occasionally booming through, like a bat in the daylight.

What I mean is that Iggy smoking hash at home or just rapping to you, still has the same charm and the same ideas that manifest themselves on stage but unlike so many with the same kind of charisma, without any sense of being ‘on’. He still knows how to relax and one wonders, quite seriously if the futuristic pop star is ready for, or wants the adulation and acclaim I and a number of others find inevitably in store for him.

One suspects a kind of geiger counter dial, lit by his imagination, somewhere in his head where he’s the only one to control it, that tells him when to turn off the stage presence and when to turn it on. And when it comes on, off-stage, it’s got an intensity that’s beyond literal belief. Makes you wonder if the hash you’ve inevitably consumed being around him is really what has you smashed or if it is merely the force of his presence.

There were moments that day when I was totally taken aback, moments of rare amnesia and thorough disorientation, several times when I had to let him continue to rap when I wanted to beg him to let me recover from the staggering blows he was delivering to my already worn psyche. And if that’s sounding like bullshit, you try it. I dare you.

I’ve been seeing the Stooges as much as possible over the last few months, not only in preparation for this story, but also because I really feel like I need to; music or anything at its best is compelling and the Stooges fit that to perfection. As a consequence, I’ve gotten to know them reasonably well, as well, let us say, as either party tends to want to know anyone, misanthropes that we may be. And all the rapping and writing that ensues from that knowledge is out of belief, you dig? The force of their reality is such that it compels you in that direction.

At any rate, it turned out that Jim had taken the trouble to read what I was writing, listen to what I was saying; the result, for me was a completely uncomfortable as it can get when another person understands you really well. If all Iggy’s personal perceptions are on that level, it’s no wonder everything he does is so intense.

When I was first getting to know Iggy and the band, he was fond of remarking that you had to be like a child to understand the Stooges, or rock and roll in general. And thus, I had (and have) more than mixed emotions about writing this; I don’t know that it’s possible to capture what the Stooges are at this point. It’s easy enough to capture what they were and to predict what they’re going to become but what they are right now, it’s impossible to say. It’s a transient stage and none of us have any idea exactly how big they’re going to make it. But a lot of us are sure that they will and that’s all that really matters.

We taped for about forty five minutes, then Jim decided he wanted to go downtown. In the car, we continued to smoke hash and rap about everything from the Stones (whom Iggy digs) to the Doors (who he doesn’t believe in anymore) to women and sex in general (“I don’t hardly fuck anymore,” he said straight-faced, “except out of habit.”)

Then, into the Virginian, the little restaurant where, he told me later, he worked at the very beginning as a waiter to pay the rent on Stooge Manor. Then it was coffee and cokes for an hour and a half, talking about things, meeting Betsy who is Jim’s latest and 14 year old flame.

Eric Ehrmann’s story was just out in Rolling Stone and the whole thing had left Jim and the rest of the Stooges pretty much disgusted. After that, he said, he’d never worry about what was written about him again. It simply couldn’t get any worse than the fabricated package that was printed there.

Things got pretty personal, swinging around to people and Ann Arbor generally. The city itself came up as a topic shortly after Stooge roadie, soon to be guitarist, Bill Cheatam, walked in and sat down across the aisle. “See,” he said, “that’s the thing about Ann Arbor. That’s gotta be in the story. I can sit here and almost everyone I know might walk through.”

Later, the prime example of what he meant occured. Steve McKay, the young horn player who used to do “Death City” comix in Creem, drifted in to talk to Jim and ask when they could get together again to jam. After he split, Iggy commented, “He hasn’t got it together yet, but he’s good and he’s gonna get Real Good.”

A week later, I went to see the band’s last gig before they split for the Coast to record the second record and McKay was playing with them on a couple of tunes, the combination ending up as a really stunning and visceral sound; a week after that, it turned out that Steve was put on a plane and sent to the Coast to be on the album and, it was hinted, maybe join the group as a full-time member. That’s what the A-2 rock scene is like. Or, more accurately, that’s what the A-2 scene is like; very ingrown and incestuous and small but very, very groovy if you know how to swing with it.

Then, it was back to the house. We drifted through, checking it out. Upstairs to check out Ron Asheton’s Nazi paraphernalia collection. Asheton’s got a three room apartment like thing on the second floor, with his collection of SS/Luftwaffe junk, flags and medals and coats, enough to drive any biker mad with envy.

Ron’s guitar playing embodies the Stooges’ music. Though his playing, and that of the band in general, has been heavily condescended towards in most analyses of the Stooges’ on record and even live, or ignored altogether, it would seem to me that what he is doing is learning how to control the electric guitar. With emphasis on electric. There’s no point in trying to learn how to do a bunch of fancy stuff that’s already been done anyway when there’s a whole wide open field of feedback left open to play about in. In other words, what may have sounded primitive in traditional terms is actually pointing in a progressive direction through the unrestrained assault on the barriers of guitar technology.

Ron was heavily influenced, in learning to play, by a trip to England that he and Dave made in 1965, watching the Who and the Move make their opening assays into rock as theatre smash-em-up.

Peter Townshend says that he started smashing guitars and using those reams and reams of feedback because, “I knew what I had to play, it was in my head. I could hear the notes in my head but I couldn’t get them out on the guitar.” It must have been a lot like that for Ron. But, by now, he’s improved; he’s been competent on the chord, “play this note here”, technique for a little while now while continuing to advance in usage of technology. What it amounts to is that he’s learned a little more of the etiquette of the instrument.

From Ron’s room it was up to the attic to Jim’s room, a sordid somewhat sloppy melange of hash-smoking remnants (empty matchbooks, burnt matches, loads and loads of ashes), a dozen pairs of gold or silver lame plastic k-mart gloves strewn among the blue jeans, the bed, no sheets, a mattress. Guitar. Iggy. And talked about the Stooges music.

It’s often seemed to me that the Stooges lyrics conveyed more realism, more about what it’s like to be an adolescent in Amerika than anything Bob Dylan ever put down. Yet Iggy places only minor emphasis on that part of his vocalising, concentrating instead on other rudiments. He has no sense of being a songwriter or, more appropriately a lyricist. “I just stand up in front of the mike and I wanta make some words, they just start flyin’. I start pickin’ the ones that sound beautiful,” he explained. “Words that come out that seem to have some truth and some beauty, just anything I like, you know. And after I figure out what the words mean, I start puttin’ ‘em together, so they sound like half-coherent, anyway. But when they start out they might make totally no sense. I just scream whatever’s on my mind. You can’t really write lyrics…because then there’s a separation between the lyrics and the music, you know?”

So how does he practice? Iggy is so totally involved in the band’s progression as a musical unit that it seems obvious that he can’t follow the path of most vocalists, only occasionally coming in until the song seems completed, then fitting the lyrics around the music. “When we practice, I jam on lyrics. Except that I sing a lot freer in practice. I sing a lot more, too. I shout and scream my lungs out.

Yet he takes a kind of perverse glee in the fact that his lyrics are often castigated as boring or simplistic. “Frankly,” he says slowly, “a lot of people aren’t far out enough to even understand ‘em. You know what I mean, I mean that’s really true. It’s not something that’s simple, ‘Wow this is really obvious.’ You gotta have a mind. Most people just don’t understand where the songs are at all. I’M GLAD.”

Which all goes back to who he wants to hear the Stooges and who he wants to be understood by. How Iggy (and, one must suppose, the Stooges who largely let Jim do their speaking for them) view the audience is not at all the way someone like say, Ten Years After views the audience. The Stooges had nothing to lose for far too long to worry about the reactions of the public now. Like any other pariahs, “When you ain’t got nothin’/You got nothin’ to lose.” Or better, “You’re invisible, you got no secrets to conceal.” The Stooges don’t care to have every fourteen year-old or even every twenty-five year-old, hippie or otherwise.

“Mass recognition is not what’s important to me, what’s important is individual recognition. In other words, it’s not how many people recognize you, it’s what the people who do recognize you, recognize you for,” he said. For once I felt almost totally sure that he wasn’t shucking. “To me the biggest band is the band that’s biggest in the hearts of the people who listen to it. But on the other hand, large numbers of people can…that’s attractive too. Fame and notoriety and money and all those things are attractive. But they’re not really attractive to me as the musical forest in which I live. I’m not gonna come out of my musical forest for anybody. ‘Cause I already know you’re just fucked if you do. So I’m just in my musical forest you know.”

 

Dave Marsh